Carole Kennedy Cook

Carole Eleanor Kennedy Cook, 88, passed away from complications brought on by a long bout with cancer, May 8, 2023, one day short of her 89th birthday, at Moffitt Cancer Center, in Tampa, Florida. She was preceded in death by her beloved husband, B.J. Cook.

Carole was born May 9, 1934, at home in Repton, Alabama, to D. Herman and Paralee (“Patsy”) Evers Kennedy. After an early childhood in Evergreen, Alabama, the Kennedy family moved to Plant City, Florida, where her father Herman served as president and later Chairman of the Board of Southland Frozen Foods. Her surviving younger sister Mary Jane Stewart now resides in Riverview, Florida.

Carole attended Plant City High School where she was an honor student, cheerleader, and selected to the Strawberry Festival Court. She set out to pursue a medical career at the University of Tennessee, veering from her family’s expectations to join many others of her clan at Auburn University. As fate would have it (the Lord’s Will), Carole met B.J., her beloved husband of 68 years, there. While at UT, she was a member of Delta Delta Delta Sorority, to which she paid her dues throughout her lifetime. Carole later took college-level courses at The Citadel.

Upon B.J.’s graduation, he was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy, and on March 20, 1954, the couple were married in Plant City and moved immediately to Key West, B. J.’s first assignment. From there they lived in Sanford, Florida, and Savannah, Georgia, near or on the naval bases there, and Carole trailed B.J. during his Mediterranean tours in the mid-1950s, of which B.J. was fond of saying, “he had a girl in every port.”

B.J. and Carole settled in Tampa, Florida, with early homes on Edgewood Road and San Miguel. Then, for four years, the Cook family, consisting of son, Daniel Joe Cook and daughter, Carole Allyson Cook Reynolds, transferred to Dallas, Texas, where B.J. took an executive position with Sperry Univac for four years.

B.J. and Carole then returned to Tampa, took up residence on Lake Hobbs in Lutz, Florida, and owned and operated The Craft Cottage on Kennedy Boulevard for seven years. There Carole was a constant fixture. Afterwards, B.J. started a lengthy and successful career in the insurance business.

Carole was a devout Christian, spending significant time as an active member of Christ Community Church and Idlewild Baptist Church, both in Tampa. She was a faithful attendee at Bible Study Fellowship. She had a heart for evangelism and missions, and found her sweet spot with Idlewild’s Missions ministries, volunteering at Just Elementary in Tampa and Florida Baptist Children’s Home in Lakeland, and joining short-term mission trips to the Appalachians, Amazon River, Costa Rica, and other mission fields. She and B.J. took two trips to Israel (her favorite place) where she was baptized in the Jordan River.

For more than twenty years, the Cooks spent half of their time at their mountaintop home in Waynesville, North Carolina, where they were faithful members of Rehoboth Baptist Church. B.J. and Carole received a steady stream of visitors and family from Florida while there.

Carole was grandmother to eight grandchildren, Phillip and wife Susannah, Stephen and wife Katie, Matthew and wife Breann, and Rachel Huertas and husband David, from daughter Allyson and her husband Richard Reynolds, and Parker, Collin and wife Bree, Madeleine, and Kennedy (two sets of identical twins) from son Dan. In fact, Phillip, Stephen, and Rachel resided with the Cooks during college and/or prior to moving into their own homes.

From her grandchildren came 13 great grandchildren. At the same time, she was central to the expanded family of Dan’s wife of 23 years, Donna, who is mother to Julie, Amanda, Philip, Jacy, Austin, and Amy, from whom came nine children. Amanda, in fact, faithfully attended to Carole (and B. J.) for approximately two years.

Friends and family are invited to attend a time of visitation at 10:30AM with a Memorial Service following at 11:30AM in the Idlewild Baptist Church 18333 Exciting Idlewild Blvd. Lutz, Florida.

Carole’s final resting place will be next to her husband and parents in Memorial Park Cemetery, Plant City, Florida.

All donations to Idlewild Missions, Idlewild Baptist Church, Lutz, Florida, will be gratefully accepted.